Finalize: Retrospective Document

Phase 5. Finalize the retrospective document.

The retrospective document

This document is the run's working artifact: it is created as a skeleton once the epic is fixed and filled as each phase completes, so Phase 5 finalizes rather than writes it from scratch. It lives at <epic folder>/epic-<slug>-retrospective.md, as readable markdown — a fixed name, so a resumed run finds it.

Open the document with YAML frontmatter a machine can read without parsing the prose — an epic gate or orchestrator keys off verdict to decide whether to hold the next epic:

---
epic: epic-<slug>
date: {date}
verdict: accepted | accepted-with-open-items | rejected
criteria: declared | profiled
headless: true | false
---

epic is the folder's name, as tickets.py spells the epic. Keep verdict in sync with the Acceptance verdict section below. This frontmatter is the only machine-readable verdict; nothing in the tree records it, so a gate or orchestrator that acts on the verdict must read this file.

Sections:

• Epic summary — which epic, its tickets with their statuses, the tickets still at built, any tickets still unfinished (pending_tickets) that the user accepted retro-ing over, each plan's range, the evidence inventory (what was available, what was missing). Unfinished tickets force the machine acceptance verdict to rejected (see {{ rendered("references/acceptance-verdict.md") }}).
• Findings — grouped by aggregate view and by lens, each with its source reference and disposition (fix now / defer / accept). This is the record; do not summarize away the provenance.
• Behavior verification — what was exercised end to end and what was observed, or an explicit note that runtime behavior was not exercised.
• Previous-retro follow-through — if a prior retro exists, whether its action items landed, with evidence ({{ rendered("references/acceptance-verdict.md") }} specifies what to record).
• Action items — the routed fix-now items and process lessons, each with an owner. Note which are proposed remediation or spec reconciliations awaiting human application.
• Decision records — each decision proposed as a record, and whether it was approved and written ({{ rendered("references/acceptance-verdict.md") }} specifies what to record).
• Acceptance verdict — accepted / accepted-with-open-items / rejected, whether the criteria were declared or profiled, and the evidence behind the call.
• Open questions — what a human answer would materially change, and anything the analyses could not resolve.
• Assumptions — in headless runs, every choice made without the user: how the epic reference resolved to its folder, any non-empty pending_tickets, a machine rejected verdict forced by unfinished tickets or rendered with no human decision, each proposed item and decision record. Omit in interactive runs — an interactive run records the same facts where the user confirmed them, in Epic summary.

Do not state time estimates anywhere in the document.

Finish

Report the document's path, the verdict, the action-item count, and the path of each decision record written. Nothing else was written: no status changed, and no tree file was edited.

On Complete

If anything appears below, follow it as the final terminal instruction before exiting; otherwise exit normally.

{{ workflow.on_complete }}